Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official, suggested Thursday that psychiatric drugs may have played a role in the Minnesota Catholic school shooting — a statement widely criticized as unsupported by science.
During an appearance on “Fox & Friends,” co-host Brian Kilmeade asked Kennedy whether the government was investigating the role of medications that treat gender dysphoria in crimes such as this one. The 23-year-old suspect, Robin Westman, was assigned male at birth and legally changed names as a teen to reflect a female identity, officials said.
Kennedy, who leads the Department of Health and Human Services, said his agency is “launching studies on the potential contribution of some of the SSRI drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence.”
SSRIs, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, a class of medications widely used to treat depression, anxiety, and other mental health disorders, have been repeatedly criticized by Kennedy, who alleges they pose serious health risks. In his “Make America Healthy Again” report, he cites them as a contributing factor to chronic disease in children.
Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minnesota) accused Kennedy of using the tragedy to spread disinformation to push a political agenda. “I dare you to go to Annunciation School and tell our grieving community that, in effect, guns don’t kill kids, antidepressants do,” she wrote on X. “Just shut up. Stop peddling bulls–t.”
Here’s what the research says:
What does data say about links between mass shooters and psychiatric medications?
In interviews and public statements over the years, Kennedy has speculated that psychiatric drugs lead to mass shootings at schools. In an April interview with YouTuber George Janko, Kennedy said the National Institutes of Health should override medical privacy rules to determine whether mass shooters used SSRIs.
An analysis of Columbia University’s Mass Murder Database shows that the lifetime prevalence of antidepressant use for perpetrators of mass shootings over the past 30 years is lower than the average number for Americans as a whole at 4 percent and for all psychiatric medications it is 7 percent, according to researcher Ragy R. Girgis, lead author of a study that is under review for publication.
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